hay

Haying by moonlight

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman came out this week on Tuesday and turned the cut grass from field one so I could have the pleasure of baling it all. I had a neighbor call me and ask about cutting their field. I ended up just going over and cutting it and then raked it after work and then baled it after work. It is beautiful grass hay. I was able to get about 1.6 tons off of their 3 acres. I had to work fast to get it all done before the sun went down as the external lights on my John Deere are dead. It also gets cold once the sun goes down. I was at the neighbors finishing up and it started to get cold and I realized my vest was no longer on the back of my seat. I happened to look over and spotted by vest inside a bale of hay! I had to cut the bale open and unroll it to get my vest out. Surprisingly, the jacket was just dirtier than normal, it did not have any tears in it.

I then ended up staying up till midnight on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night trying to get all of the hay baled from field one that we had cut. I was supposed to only cut half the field but I think I cut about 70% of the field instead!

On Friday I had puppy duty so we went to town early to get dog food and chicken food then he had to stay on the breeze porch for three hours while I baled hay. I came back around 1400 and we went to town for tractor parts. I knew I needed to drive the pickup in the am but could not remember why so I took the car, I remembered when I got to town that I needed to pickup tractor parts. The puppy thought he was dying by having to spend three hours on the porch. He cannot run around outside because the man lift is in use and there is no way you could not run over him if he was outside. He has no fear of the equipment.

At 1600 I went back out and baled. The baler was causing me problems and not rolling bales well. I opened up the side and realized the main gear chain was loose and I could no longer adjust the tightness any more, my adjuster was adjusted to the maximum. I drove back to the house as it was getting dark and worked on shortening the chain. Mr Gingerman came out to help me and the progeny held the light. I still have not gotten the machine shed lights wired up yet. I am closer but I need to get it finished. We ended up taking out three links. Should have done 4-5. While we were fixing the chain, of course it had to be totally removed, it was discovered that I had better order a full set of gears as the teeth on some are pretty worn. That is going to be expensive. I have two gears already I believe, so I will need to generate a parts list first before calling for replacements. If they have to come from Italy it will take 30-45 days unless I air mail them and I don’t need them that bad.

Gingerman worked on the 1957 brakes and got them working well enough to safely drive the beast to a shop and have the brakes fully worked over. So I will be adding that to the list next week. He did say there is a radiator leak also. Who would have guessed after sitting idle for 25+ years? So that will need to be added to the list. I have still not figured out how to install new side window felt to keep the windows from rattling around and braking. You Tube is not helping me there. I need to get those repaired before I can start using the truck, I am afraid I will just beat/brake the windows from driving around on the rough ground unless it is repaired.

I went back out to bale some more and it worked much better but the grass is getting too dry, 8% moisture and its just so slick that it does not want to roll up well. I need to put a few more gripper strips on the rollers to get it to form better bales. At midnight I just gave up, there was about another three hours of baling left, if everything worked normal which it was not. I was dumping more bales than I could get formed and wrapped. Besides after three nights working 19-20 hour days I was was wearing down.

Hay storage remodel

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have been thinking about hay so Mr Rainman was mowing fields, the cheat grass is trying to take over parts of the farm. I went in and moved out the last of the broken hay bales and started to dig out the hay storage area in the machine shed. Once I had all the hay out I cleaned it out with the bucket and started working on digging a “T” shape at the back of the building to allow me to put in a French drain that will remove moisture and drain it out into a water sink in front of the building. The runoff from the roof is collecting and causing moisture issues.

Mr Rainman and I spent about two hours digging ditch and moving the dirt out. We are waiting on gravel to be delivered. I ordered it and it came this week. The ditch needs to be a little deeper and then I will install the drain and fill it up with gravel. Once that is done the entire bottom will be graveled. My hope is that I can get the Gingerman to come over with a bigger tractor and stack the bales 3-4 high. I could store 45 large bales in that area if they are stacked. Once we have the inside all completed we will work on a French drain on the backside of the machine shed. I dug a gravel trench years ago and it did make a huge difference but now I want the majority of the moisture to go away fairly quickly. We are no longer just getting “a little” rain at a time now. We are getting 1/2-1” at a time! This causes other problems. If you had not noticed the problems tend to change therefore causing new problems that old solutions no longer cure.

Once Mr Rainman left I got on the tractor and mowed cheatgrass until dark. I remembered why I need to not wear my hearing aids with ear muffs after the muffs pushing my ear up against the hearing aid for four hours. I had a heck of an external ear ache that lasted a few hours. Plus, the external pocket battery did not have enough juice to recharage my Bluetooth speaker headphones so I had to mow in silence. I charged them up that night so that would not happen again!

The wife says I managed to snore and moan at the same time in my sleep that night. She believes that I should do some form of baseline exercise year round instead of diving right in at spring time and working myself into the ground or until I cannot physically continue. It does make more logical sense, no question about it. In another month or so I should be past most of the pain.

We are having raccoon issues again. We have one coming to the back porch where we feed the cats. The Gingerman and wife failed to kill it. I have not seen it yet but keep getting woken up by the dogs barking which causes me to get out of bed and attempt to see the raccoon. No luck, but I am not losing chickens yet so I will keep after it. Eventually, I will get lucky or the raccoon will get unlucky.

Lambing has begun!

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Slowly but surely we continue to get little things done but nothing holds back Mother Nature. Yesterday one of the ewes gave birth to our first lambs this birthing cycle, a set of twins! Of course the sheep were on the back hillside about halfway down to the schoolhouse. Annmarie happened to spot them from the driveway when she was returning home. I walked out and tried to catch both lambs but could only get a hold of the little brown one. Both lambs were still wet and the mother had not passed a placenta yet. The little black one ran with mom all the way back to the barn. Annmarie caught it as it was trying to get into the barn. She used the lamb lure to get the mother to run into the momma/baby area. The barn lights are amazing! You can clearly see in the needed areas but you have to plan ahead as you can only use two light strings at a time. It is a huge improvement, I should have done it two years ago when I saw the conversion on YouTube. We will keep the momma and babies separated. We have the momma/baby barn lot run locked off so the grass is about eight inches tall in that area. The ewe will be happy. In three days we will let her out with the twins and they can start to get in and out of the barn by themselves. I believe there are 38-39 ewes and not all of them are pregnant. We will count as we go. I will start the statistics after we get a few more lambs. There were no new babies this morning. I will be doing morning duties so when I wake up at 0400 I will now be going to the barn to check for babies first thing and feed and water any new mommas and let everyone out of the barn.

Mr Rainman came out midweek and got the large hay bales covered. The grass in field 4b is very tall. I may end up putting up a fence around the hay with a large removable wire gate for the front. I would need to put it far enough away from the bales that the cows and sheep could not reach through it to get the hay. The old road sign tarps are very heavy duty! We will see if they can last through the winter and wind over the next four months.

The new chicken door came and Mr Rainman installed it. The door closes just after it gets dark. It has a built in solar panel so the AA batteries will keep charged. It has a flashing red light that starts up and means the door will close in 30 minutes. I know this as I have been looking every evening to see if the door actually shuts. I am doubtful that the chickens will learn that they have 30 minutes once the red light starts flashing. It has been pretty dark and the door is still open. The door does cycle and the chickens really are that stupid. Some know to get into the coop before dark but others want to be out late and miss the curfew. Those chickens have to wait outside until the next day. My hope is with the new run door they will be protected despite their tendencies to stay out late partying. The last step will be to put in some overhead 2×4 rafters and run chicken wire over the top of the run so that the chickens are truly protected from all predators.

I got a new outlet wired in the root cellar stairs so when the new LED lights come I can install them quickly in the ceiling of the root cellar. I had left a empty wire conduit for just this purpose on the side of the box. What I failed to realize was how much harder it is to add things after the fact. I did actually have to turn off power in the box so I could get it all wired up. I also cleaned up the last of the barn wiring supplies so the barn is ready for the lambs. I have been doing a lot of little tasks. They all need to get done but I get frustrated, it feels like I am working the last 10% of a project; I am but it is still annoying.

Fall is definitely here and since the ewes cannot go on the back hillside anymore I am using them to clean up our front hillside and make the leaves in the yard disappear. The dogs do not particularly like staying in the house all day, especially the puppy. She wants to be outside digging, I filled in four huge holes in the yard yesterday. But after she learned to jump the low fence from the garden area she cannot stay outside. I don’t want to install that side fence permanently until after we manage to get the siding replaced. We are still looking for a contractor! It is very hard to find someone reliable and good.

Winter is coming

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Well Winter is definitely coming, we had our first freeze this fall. It dropped down into the low 20’s F and there is snow visible on the mountains and low foothills. We got rain instead of snow but Winter is coming. This spurred the decision to finally go and pickup the big bales of alfalfa that I had purchased this spring. My supplier holds them for me as I almost always pick them up late! I am a reliable customer so it works for both of us. I had been selling off the old small round bales from the machine shed and I managed to get the last of them unloaded and sold the day I went and picked up the large bales. I could store most of the years alfalfa in the machine shed if I had a tractor that could lift 1400# bales 14 feet into the air. But since I do not, I put 15 bales in the machine shed and they are the very last bales that I feed in the late winter/early spring. The rest go out onto the hillside in field 4b. The animals all get locked out of that field and I usually buy a big tarp and toss a lot of pallets on it to hold it in place. After buying the vinyl sign to use as a tarp and seeing how thick it is I bought two 12’x40’ signs/tarps and will lay those across the top of the large bales. I think they may even survive the winter. They should be here by the end of the week. Mr Rainman/me bent the loader support on the Kubota. It is for removing the loader and helping it be freestanding. The pull pin got displaced and the arm popped down while a big bale was getting jostled in place and it bent. The main pin had to be cut in three places to get it to let go! A 2# hammer and punch could not drive it out. The pin has spring clips so it will have to be a special order item. We were able to keep moving hay and that was the important part.

One of the things observed when we got the machine shed cleaned out was that there is a pretty damp back corner of the hay storage side. I had put down pallets last time and that worked really well to keep the hay from rotting. Years ago I had dug a trench on the backside of the machine shed and filled it with gravel to increase the drainage removal from the roof runoff. This did help quite a bit but it looks like it needs more help. Next year the gravel needs to be dug out and some French drain hose installed and then replace the gravel. I will also run the end of the drain farther away from the building. This should help quite a bit. The front ditch works wonders but I made a big sink hole for all of the water to go into and I did not do that with the back section.

Sunday we went out first thing to sort the cows. It was cold again so I put on a long sleeve shirt, knit hat, knit neck warmer, insulated carharts, large bulky quilted long sleeve over shirt and insulated gloves. I had a heavy vest ready to go but decided that I was dressing for -20F instead of 22F. I put the puppy, Chance, on a lead rope and we opened up gates to get the cows to the corral so that the bull could be sorted off. Once the bull is in Alcatraz we can put all of the cows into one herd. We can run one herd of cows until January when this years calves need to be weaned off. We will sort off the market cows and the calves and put those 11 cows down by the houses and keep the other above the house, there will be three fences and 100 yards minimum between the two herds. In reality there are a bunch of buildings and earthworks that prevent a line of sight from happening. They can still talk to each other and will especially right after we separate them. It is about 3-5 days of lots of hollering and voiced displeasure from both parties.

Chance did great once she got settled down. She wanted to sniff the hillside and find coyotes. She does not like other dogs as they are interlopers on her property. She does fine with our other border collie but not any other dog. We have not discouraged this as our coyote problem is immense and we want her to alert us if she spots one. Mr Rainman and I merely walked to the schoolhouse, had to run halfway up the hill once and then casually walk the cows to the hen house pasture. Once there we were able to separate the bull from the rest of the herd, opened the back door to Alcatraz and he went in as directed. We did not even have to use the corral to sort! I took Chance into the front barn lot and we worked the cows in an enclosed space. I let her run around with the lead rope trailing (there is nothing for the rope to catch on) and giving her commands to move the cows. She did great! I can now get her to lay down while she is mid chase on one of the cows. She will stop and drop to the ground. We need more work on her directions, left, right and circle around. The true key though is to be able to turn off the dog no matter what the circumstances, once you can do that training the other commands is easy. Once we let the cows out there were about 18 sheep that had come in still in the area, so I had Mr Rainman call Chance and work the sheep. We want her to respond to multiple people. A one person dog is great when you are the only one working the dog but having one that will listen to other people is handy. She is a true people pleaser so this fits right in with her personality.

I had shed the gloves, hat and neck warmer by the time we got off the hillside and by the time we got to the hen house I had taken off the outer jacket and was just wearing my Carharts and a light long sleeve shirt! I should have known, the rule is to leave the house with enough clothes that you are just a little uncomfortable and want more to stay warm. Work and exercise will give you the needed heat to stay warm and you won’t sweat.

We put in another gate into the alleyway from the hen house pasture. This way the animals can always get to water. The main spring on the farm originates in that pasture. We have had the gate leaning up against the fence since last year when we finished the alleyway. Now the cows will always be able to get to water. I even chained the gate open so it cannot accidentally get closed. There is one more gate still to be installed there and one small section of fence to install so that the cows can get to most of field four but not the area where we store the cow hay.

Some things continue to amaze me. We had a volunteer pumpkin grow at the main burn pile. The alpaca did not eat the plant, flower or pumpkin but the most amazing part was the plant got zero water. This summer we went over two months with no rain at one point. Annmarie made pumpkin purée and froze it today. We will be eating the rest for dinner tonight. I am going to plant several seeds around the pile in the spring! Who knows maybe this is the trick to growing pumpkins. The quail are everywhere, we have very large coveys all over the farm and we have started to keep a quail feed block out front by the old farm equipment pile. We hear quail all of the time now whenever we are outside. Heck, we even have a new pair of barn owls on the place. They have decided to roost in the large trees out front just before sunrise. They talk back and forth and are quite noisy. The coyote hunters have tried two more times without any success. They did see more coyotes but could not safely shoot them. Pretty quick we will be locking the sheep up at night and only letting them go out into the ram pasture as they will have lambs.

First hay in the barn

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It is time, haying season is officially here. I went out and inspected the fields last week. The cheatgrass is a menace. Fields that I tried to replant in the fall with new grass are nothing but solid cheatgrass. Fields that were full of cheatgrass last year are not this year. So we are mowing the cheatgrass down wherever we find it and just haying where I can find big patches of good grass.

The lower schoolhouse pasture looked pretty good this year so it got cut on Sunday. The new sickle bar mower cut through the whole field in under two hours. I then turned it after work twice in the late evening. I was able to finish just as the sun was going down so I did not have to use the work lights on the tractor. Wednesday it was ready to be baled.

Mr Rainman came out Wednesday to start baling. He had to wait until it warmed up a little and burned off the dew. He managed to get the first bale made but could not get the net wrap to roll out like it was should have. I came home to trouble shoot it, I should have known that the first time operating the baler for the year was not going to go smooth. I was hoping it would! I washed the feed roller, no go. I then verified net was installed correctly and finally I just pulled some of the netting loose from the roll. The roll was very dusty as it has been on the baler since last year. I think I may need to cover the baler with a tarp this year after we get done and get it cleaned up. Once we got the first roll wrapped the clean netting worked just fine on the next bale. He was off and going and managed to bale the entire lower field, 133 bales in a about 3 hours. I came home, we hooked up the flat bed trailer to the pickup and went out into the field and picked it all up. The first 83 bales went into the barn. The next 50 bales made it to the barn lot but not inside. Their were about 3-4 bales that had a moisture reading over 20%. So we spread the bales out on the trailer so the sun and weather could heat them up for a few days.

The weather was cooperating fantastically until last night. We had a storm come through last night and drop 11/100” of rain on us in under an hour. So now the bales will need to stay out in the weather a little longer. I had big plans on cutting new hay down yesterday but I had to prioritize the paying job an spent most of the day working. When I came home I was tired, took a nap in the yard for an hour and then Annmarie told me to just do it the next day. I took her offer and by the time the rain showed up I was grateful that I had not cut any grass. I will have to wait another day now before I can cut hay. This rain should give my field #1 a needed boost. That is going to be the field I cut last. There are 50 bales to a ton this year. The bales are 40-45# this year. The grass looks great and since we are only doing small batches it is very green and lovely hay.